Thursday, July 02, 2009

Massanutten The First Couple of Days

The first couple of day of our vacation to Massanutten, VA, was spent at the water park and going to Mt. Vernon, VA, the home of George Washington.

The above is the outside of the water park. Those tubes are water slides that you ride down on in inner tubes and one was painted black on the inside. You can’t see you hand in front of your face. There wasn’t a sense of speed as you were going down the shoot, but you could feel the side to side swaying as you go through the turns. Then you see a speck of light and you think, ‘It’s almost over.’ Not! That speck of light comes from a downward fall before sliding out into the pool.

The other slides are lit and you feel the vibration one feels in a jet before it breaks mach 1. Your ears are slapping together in back of your head and your cheeks are blown back over your ear holes. Your tongue is rolled back in your throat and the waistband of your trunks is under your arm pits; everyone knows what your religion is when you come out of the shoot into the pool. I love it and rode it several times.

The small tubes are for going down on your back without an inner tube. They are fast, too, but the water really sloshes in your face. I got a nose-enema several times going down, but it was great.

The whole park is great with a river ride on tubes, a wave pool for those who love the ocean, a three or four story water slide that goes over a couple of bumps. It is a great way to spend time with the kiddies.

This is Mt Vernon. We were there on Sunday, Fathers Day, and George was there to greet us – all 5,000 of us. We got there early and had to wait in line to tour the house for about an hour. When we came out the line was winding all the way down the side of the plantation out to the parking lot.

Here is George worrying with one of the staff people over the number of guest. He said he thought the larders had enough food to feed us all, but he didn’t think he had enough room to accommodate everyone. As he was walking off he passed us and stopped. He looked down at my granddaughter, Bug, and said to her, “Young lady, a little girl without freckles on her face is like a night time sky without stars.” Then he walked off. Bug, who is very shy around strangers, had her chest out and the biggest smile on her face. She told me as we moved with the line, “Paw Paw, he is the best President ev’ah.”

Later he talked to a throng of about thirty people about his parents and his childhood, about being President and about his step-family. Martha buried all four of her kids. The oldest boy, who adored George, begged to go with him to fight the battle of Saratoga, but he died of a fever just after George rushed to his bedside. It was his kids that kept the Washington/Custis (Martha’s maiden name) alive through history. Robert E Lee was married to a Mary Anna Rudolph Custis Lee, the granddaughter.

That’s all for today. I’ll post some more later about horse back riding and Washington, DC.

I'm glad you got to Mt. Vernon. I was there a few years ago, since I live so close. It's a beautiful place. I need to go back in the Spring, though. I think I went in October all the foliage was napping.